The name alone made him noticeable and Yelberton
Abraham Tittle from Marshall, TX was a premiere player. Completing fifteen of
seventeen pass attempts against Tulane in his 1944 freshman season at LSU,
Tittle began to earn the reputation as a QB with a great arm. He led the squad
to a 7-2 record in 1945 and a number eight national ranking in ’46 with a
nine-win season. Though his statistics were modest by today’s standards, Tittle
was known for his gifted passing ability and set numerous school records. In his
career, he completed 166 passes for 2517 yards and twenty-one touchdowns. As the
number-one draft choice of the 1948 AAFC Baltimore Colts who joined the NFL in
1950, Tittle’s arm again gained immediate notice and when the Colts franchise
closed down, Y.A. joined the San Francisco Forty Niners. He was as a young QB,
at first forced to share playing time with established great Frankie Albert and
later as an aging gunslinger, forced to do the same with young and emerging John
Brodie, even when he was named the NFL MVP for 1957. Seemingly at the end of the
line and traded to the Giants for the 1961 season, few would have predicted his
record breaking performances and two more NFL MVP Awards for 1962 and ’63. He
threw seven TD passes against the Redskins in 1962 and set a then-NFL record of
thirty-six TD passes during the 1963 season when he led the Giants to the
championship game for the third consecutive time. Tittle completed his Pro
Football Hall Of Fame career with 33070 passing yards and 242 touchdowns! Six
Pro Bowls and three MVP awards established him as a great and he remains thusly
honored at LSU and within the NFL.

With Bernie Moore preparing to leave for the
administrative offices of the Southeastern Conference, speculation ran rampant
regarding the next LSU head coach with the names of some of the nation’s top men
tossed about as if the contracts were already signed. A front-runner was Bob
Woodruff of Baylor and he became the favorite choice but Baylor would not allow
him to get out of his contract. There was pressure from some quarters to hire an
alumnus of LSU which turned the search towards names that were not as highly
respected. The choice made on March 10, 1948 was Gaynell “Gus” Tinsley, a former
Tiger All American end who had then enjoyed three pro seasons with the Chicago
Cardinals, two of them All Pro years which earned him a spot on the NFL’s 1930’s
Team Of The Decade. With a penchant for turning short passes into long gains, he
caught a pass for a ninety-seven yard advance in 1937 and took another for
ninety-eight in ’38. He coached at the high school level and was an assistant at
LSU under Bernie Moore before entering the U.S. Navy. He returned to high school
coaching, a second tour as an LSU assistant, tutoring the ends while Y.A. Tittle
was the Tiger QB, and was as surprised as most fans when he was appointed the
new Tigers mentor. He planned to continue using Moore’s T-Formation in 1948 but
faced a rebuilding job as LSU approached its toughest schedule in years. Doing
little to change Moore’s established offensive attack, QB Charley Pevey was
placed under center and proved to be dependable but the offense could score but
ninety-nine points while yielding a record 271, a record that unfortunately
stood for some time thus explaining the tumble to 3-7. With a staff shake-up,
’49 became a miracle turnaround although the 19-0 loss to Bear Bryant’s Kentucky
squad in the opener would not have predicted that. The 8-2 record was sparked by
DT Ray Collins who played with San Francisco, the N.Y. Giants, and then in the
inaugural two seasons of the AFL with the Dallas Texans. Other standouts
included QB Pevey who later became an LSU assistant coach, and backs Ken Konz,
Billy Baggett, and Zollie Toth who played for the N.Y. football Yankees, Dallas,
and Baltimore. One of the highlights was a home win over North Carolina, winner
of twenty straight games, controversial because the Tarheels claimed that LSU
had soaked the field to slow down their great back Charlie Justice. LSU’s reward
for their fine season was the national notation as “The First Unofficial Dixie
Champion” having defeated the winners of the three major southern and
southwestern conferences and a Sugar Bowl berth against Bud Wilkinson’s great
number two ranked Oklahoma team. Even with the 35-0 whipping by OU, the Tigers’
season was an unexpected success.

1950 showed the inconsistency that marked the
Tinsley years as the Tigers dropped to 4-5-2 despite a good defense that got a
boost from BC transfer George “The Terrible” Tarasovic of Connecticut. With
Tarasovic at DE the Tigers could hold opponents reasonably well but remained
unsettled at QB all season. Konz and Baggett provided the backfield play with
Konz especially good on defense. After two years in the Air Force, he played
with the Browns as a three-time Pro Bowl performer until 1959 while Baggett was
the Rams round one pick and then went to Dallas. Continuing Tinsley’s
roller-coaster ride of inconsistency, the Tigers surprised everyone in 1951 by
improving to 7-3-1 with freshman DT Sid Fournet and Tarasovic, an All American,
the big stoppers. Tarasovic had a lengthy pro career as a DE and LB as part of
the rugged Steelers from ’52 through the half-way point of the 1963 season and
then went to the Eagles where he finished that year, and played another two. He
played in 1966 with the Broncos before calling it quits. When fans saw the
Tigers take the field in 1952, many did double-takes upon viewing the new
uniforms. A letter-number system was used, with ends wearing E, tackles T, and
guards G. The letter designations were followed by a numeral from one to nine
with the right side of the line wearing even numbers and the left odd. Centers,
which often included linebackers, wore C, quarterbacks Q, left and right
halfbacks L and R respectively, and fullbacks with the expected F and these
letters were also followed by the numerals one through nine. Seeing right
halfback Al Doggett streaking into the open wearing number R3 was unusual and
confusing. After the noted improvement between the 1950 and ’51 records, dismay
followed in 1952 with what had become Tinsley’s usual inconsistent results and
the team fell to 3-7. Left HB Jerry Marchand transferred in from Notre Dame and
joined FB Leroy Labat and Doggett in the backfield and they helped to provide
the few bright spots for the season with consecutive wins against Rice and
Kentucky, thus saving the season from utter disaster.

Soph end Joe Tuminello and big Sid Fournet who was a
second team All American and All SEC choice at tackle received help from
freshman FB and kicker Tommy Davis that helped the team win games they were
predicted to lose but they also lost when expected to win. The resultant 5-3-3
slate for 1953 was another disappointment though tough Marchand earned respect
by playing the entire Georgia game with a fractured jaw and broken teeth and RB
Charles Oakley performed well enough to land on the Bears roster for ‘54.
Attendance at Baton Rouge took a beating in 1954 as the Tigers floated through a
5-6 season though Fournet made All American and then played for the Rams and
Steelers in the NFL, then Dallas and the New York Titans and Jets, in the AFL.
LSU supporters had decided change was necessary and in conjunction with changes
in the State Legislature, both AD Red Heard and Tinsley were gone as of February
5, 1955.

The screening committee began with a list of head
coaching candidates that included Navy assistant Ben Martin who would later
become the head coach at the Air Force Academy, and Perry Moss, the
well-traveled coach who had been an LSU assistant and was currently serving at
Miami. Highly recommended was former Little All American center at Miami in
Ohio, Paul Dietzel. He had played on an undefeated Mansfield (OH) H.S. squad and
then started his college career at Duke but departed the Durham campus to become
a B-29 pilot during the War. Upon his return he enrolled at Miami and starred
for their head coach Sid Gillman. When Gillman became an assistant at Army under
legendary Red Blaik, he convinced Dietzel who had plans to attend Columbia
Medical College in New York, to join him at West Point as the Plebe coach. From
there Dietzel again followed Gillman when he took the head coaching position at
Cincinnati. He enhanced his resume by joining the Kentucky staff of Bear Bryant
for two years, and then returned to West Point under Blaik to be line coach. On
February 15, 1955, he became LSU’s head coach at the age of twenty-nine. He
retained all but one of Tinsley’s staff and replaced him with a significant
hire, bringing Ohio high school coach Bill Peterson on board. Peterson would
later be successful as the pass-happy innovative head coach at Florida State,
Rice, and the Houston Oilers. Another less hyped event was the hiring of new
Athletic Director Jim Corbett, a man who would later be recognized as putting
Tiger football into the national consciousness with his dedication, zeal, and
ability to raise the money necessary to continually renovate the LSU facilities
that in 1955 were among the worst in the country. Utilizing the Army-T System
Dietzel ran his squad of seventy-four spring ball candidates down to forty-three
by the opening game of the 1955 season against Kentucky. In a major upset,
Kentucky was defeated 19-7 but the bubble burst the next week against Bear
Bryant’s resurgent Texas A&M squad and the season was an up and down ride to
3-5-2. The most significant factor in judging the success of the Dietzel-Corbett
inaugural season was a huge increase in home attendance and this garnered a
contract extension for Dietzel. Again, Tuminello starred as an All SEC choice as
did tackle Earl Leggett.

If interested in any of these LSU helmets please click on the
photos below.